


Come Back to Me and Say My Land Is Best

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arya Comes Home, Arya Shouldn't Have Been Alone on that Boat, F/M, Fix It Fic, GoT spoilers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Post Game of Thrones, Spoilers for Season 8, What even WAS that, change my mind, flangst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 09:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18891529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: And how she smiled and how she laughed, the maiden of the tree. She spun away and said to him, no featherbed for me.A year after the Council named their new King, Gendry Baratheon is trying to be the best possible lord for his people. His thoughts continue to drift to a girl though, a girl who left him and Westeros behind -- until one day, she comes back.(Post Season 8, episode 6 -- fix-it for the finale)





	Come Back to Me and Say My Land Is Best

**Author's Note:**

> If you also watched the finale and were screaming at Arya Stark sailing away on a boat by herself, why, this is for you!
> 
> The excerpt in the summary is from [My Featherbed](https://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/My_Featherbed) and the title is from ["The Ent and the Entwife"](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Ent_and_the_Entwife) from LOTR which D&D were so CLEARLY trying to emulate (and, imo, failed -- oh my god, Tolkien, I'm so sorry they tried to bring the Scourging of the Shire/Grey Havens down like that)
> 
>  
> 
> I hope you enjoy?!?

Storm’s End is a hive of activity, right up until the sun is swallowed by the horizon, marking the end of another fretful day.

Gendry Baratheon (he still catches himself, sometimes, saying _Waters_ ) walks through the halls, nodding at servants and minor lords that pass him by, at maesters and knights alike. It’s been a year since he sat on a council and agreed to let Bran Stark rule the Six Kingdoms, and it’s been the first peaceful year he can ever recall.

No struggle to live, like there was when he was the blacksmith’s boy. No struggle to survive, like there was when he was the last potential heir to the Iron Throne and House Baratheon.

He’d figured out how to be a lord: a lot of it was listening to people smarter than him, people better than him, who liked to advise more than they liked to rule. He was positive he was fucking up left and right, but no one had tried to kill him yet.

Yet.

Shaking his head and feeling a weariness he still struggled to accept in his bones, Gendry walks into the abandoned forge, determined to do some work before turning in for the night. He leaves his guard at the door, not interested in defending himself from the flames and melted iron; busying his hands was the one true way to quiet his mind, lest he encounter troubling dreams of a girl with dark hair and grey eyes, who sailed off across the sea and never returned to him again.

His mind often drifts to her, these days. He's sure it will drift to her until his last day.

He sees her around every corner, in every tree, in the fire itself sometimes. Perhaps that's why he doesn't notice for almost five minutes; perhaps that's why he mistakes her for a ghost.

Clearing his throat and inspecting his tools, Gendry addresses the darkness.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you had come to kill me.”

Gendry looks to his left and smiles tightly at the shadow that’s peeled away from the wall.

She’s as beautiful as she was when she left King’s Landing a year ago, a new scar joining the rest, curving along her temple. His stomach turns slightly at the thought of his la-- at the thought of _Arya_ being at the receiving end of such a blow, but he doesn’t let the concern show on his face. She’ll take it as pity, and he really doesn’t feel like dying today.

“You never married.” Arya’s studying him as coolly as she’d studied the wall that night she’d stuck three knives into it, and he eyes her hands warily.

“No.”

He shrugs like it doesn’t bother him to talk to her about this. He’d managed on the King’s Council a year ago to be near her when she’d kept him so far from her. He can manage a few minutes more. After all, she’s here, and he’s not dead; she clearly wants to speak to him about something important. So why open with questions about his marital status?

“I take it you didn’t either?” He adds sardonically.

Arya steps out further into the flickering light cast by the torches overhead, still studying his face, her pale eyes brightened by the fire. He remembers the road, and her secret he helped her carry, and Hot Pie and all of it -- and, unbidden, a song comes to his mind, even as she doesn’t try to answer his question.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to be my lady.” He bows his head respectfully and exhales through his nose. “Took me a while to accept it. I might still resent you for it. But you’re right. You weren’t meant to be a lady, for a man to keep you safe and warm.” His voice hitches slightly, but he clenches his jaw.

“I didn’t want a featherbed,” Arya whispers, and his gut tightens more.

“You remember, then?”

“How could I forget?” Arya turns and studies the flickering of the forge, her eyes softer now -- or maybe that was simply a trick of the light. “I had to forget so much of myself; but, the parts of my past that were connected to you...I could never escape them so easily.”

“You could have fooled me,” Gendry snaps, like they’re still children on the run, but Arya only tilts her head in acknowledgement. “Sorry. I apologize. Please, sit, and tell me about your travels?”

He gestures at the low table, roughhewn of stone, stools cluttered about it, and he thinks maybe he should invite her to the council room, or at least one of the nicer chambers of Storm’s End. But, she’d just said she didn’t want a featherbed, anything gentle, and--

She’s smiling at him, an expression of real delight.

“What?” He squints his eyes at her suspiciously.

“You were so worried about not knowing what to do,” Arya says quietly, her voice barely audible over the crackle of the flames. “And look at you. You’re a proper lord, Gendry Baratheon.”

He huffs, an old anger rising in his gut. “Well, I wasn’t trained proper for it like some people, but I try to do the best I can--”

“I’m not trying to insult you.” She snorts and shakes her head, looking back into the flames. He wonders if she’s cold, if he should offer her a thicker cloak, but he catches himself. She’s a Stark. He’s not entirely sure she can feel the cold. “Honestly. It’s good to know you’re still a bull, even if you’re a lord.”

Gendry smiles before he can stop himself. “No one’s called me that for a long while.”

“You haven’t seen me for a long while,” she points out, and it’s sweet where it should be bitter. He takes it though.

He always takes what he can get when it comes to Arya Stark. A condition that lingers from childhood.

“So, why did you come, then? If not to kill me, and if not to insult me?” Gendry forces his voice to be light where it wants to be heavy, to fall like iron debris on the floor between them, to collect like a mountain of regret in the space that used to be warm and - if he could lie to himself long enough - loving.

“I found what’s west of Westeros.”

Arya turns from the fire fully and clasps her hands behind her back, her eyes fixed on his face. They still bear the light of the fire in them, and he has to blink to make sure the light isn’t playing tricks on him.

“And?” He licks his lip, waiting for her to respond, and fights the urge to scratch at his scalp, his hair longer now, long and pulled back from his face like Jon Snow used to style his hair, or even, as Gendry’s heard, the king who sired him.

“I need weapons.” Arya explains calmly, nudging her chin towards the waiting forge.

He scoffs again, rolling his eyes because _of course_ that’s what she came here for, why wouldn’t she --

 _But why wouldn’t she_ ….

Gendry frowns down at her.

“Why not go North?”

“North?” Arya doesn’t avoid his gaze necessarily, but it’s like something shutters behind her eyes.

“Yes, North.” Gendry jabs a thumb over his shoulder, an approximation of north of Storm’s End. “Cold? White shit everywhere? Can’t take a piss without it freezing?”

Arya lifts her brow in a smirk, and he fights the urge to poke at her side the way he had when they were children -- back then, she’d slap him or try to punch him, the blows landing like feathers on his skin. He’d laughed so much when she’d fought him, a warmth and love and acceptance he’d never found anywhere else, not in Flea’s Bottom, not at Storm’s End, and certainly never from a featherbed.

“Your sister is Queen of the North,” Gendry reminds her, and Arya’s mouth twitches, only slightly. “Why not go to her for weapons?”

“You’re the best. I came to you because you’re the best,” Arya says, but something in her eyes tells him it isn’t the full truth. She’d been shit at lying as a little girl, and she’s gotten better at it, but he knows her tells, learned them well when they ran from death together.

Arya Stark holds her small fists a certain way when she’s defiant; she sticks her chin out and grinds her heels into the ground when she wants to be believed.

She very much wants to be believed in this second.

And for a second, he wants so desperately for her to not run away again, he almost doesn’t call her on it. The relief at just _seeing_ her, alive and breathing, is almost enough to have him swallow his pride and let her go again. Almost.

“That’s not it.”

“Yes, it is.”

Gods, it’s like they’re children. It really is. He’d smile and laugh like a boy if he had the energy.

“Really?” He cocks his head at her with another smirk. “Well, I have several apprentices who do a fine job with weapons. I trained them myself and can vouch for every last one of them. You can share your designs with them in the morning -- I’ll call for someone to prepare an extra chamber in the servants’ quarters -- and I will personally oversee the construction of your weapons.” He bows to her and gestures to the door. “If that’s all you came here for, Arya Stark of Winterfell.”

When she says nothing, he turns, praying she won’t call him on his bluff. He walks, and grows nervous on the sixth step and she hasn’t said anything, hasn’t called out to him.

Then, there’s a rush of air, and she’s standing in front of him, her eyes wide as saucers, still luminous.

“What if there was something more?”

“Something more?” Gendry pretends to consider it, wanting to drag it out to tease her, but she surprises him by talking again, quickly.

“What if there was something more I wanted?”

There’s desperation in her voice and eyes, and suddenly his heart plummets.

He can’t do this. Not again. He tells her as much.

“I will not be your featherbed,” Gendry warns her, hoping the grief on his face softens the blow of his words. Her expression is inscrutable, but her mouth is slightly open, and gods, he can’t look at her mouth for long if he wants his resolve to remain. He clears his throat, tightens his jaw and continues:

“I am not here for you to return to whenever you feel like it,” he says, even though almost all of him disagrees. “I cannot live like that, Arya. I’m sorry, but you broke my heart. You did, and maybe that makes me a bad lord for not getting over it, for not moving on with the next pretty lass who wants to pop out babies to carry on a name I don’t even want to wear, but I’d be a fool to let you break what’s never even healed.”

“You’re an idiot.” Arya’s staring up at him, her slightly delighted smile back in place, and instead of being angered, he’s slightly delighted by her comment, despite the ache in his heart.

“No one contests that, believe me.”

“I love you.” Arya doesn’t blink when she says it; her hands are open and at her sides, her stance uncertain, one foot pointed into the other, her chin lowered even as she looks him in the eyes. He’s not an expert by any means, not in the ways of Arya Stark, but something tells him that this is the truth, and he tries not to fall over from it. “I - I love you, and it took sailing to the end of the world to realize that it’s not bravery for me to never tell you. So I’m telling you now. I love you.”

“You love me?”

“Are you really so thick-headed you need to hear it three times before it can get through there?” She has the audacity to poke his head in his own bloody castle, and Gendry swats at her with a snort.

“Yes. I want to hear it again.”

“I. Love. You.” Arya enunciates each word with an insulting slowness. “Do you need me to get a piece of paper or perhaps a tablet to carve it into--”

He’s down on one knee before he can remind himself that _they’ve been this before and it’s still not a great idea._ She looks mildly surprised, but her delighted smile is still in place; Arya is just as beautiful now as she was at Winterfell.

“Gendry--”

“I don’t want to marry you,” Gendry declares, his heart in his throat anyway, and Arya’s mouth stills, back into a smile again. “Because you would never be a wife. You would never be a lady. But you’re Arya Stark, and I love you, and I love you for every throat you’ve cut, and every raper you’ve killed, and every bloody pair of eyes you’ve shut. I love you when the sun rises, and I love you when the sun sets in the west, when all I can do is stare at the horizon and wonder where you are.

“I don’t want to give you a kingdom. I don’t want you to be my lady. But I also don’t want to be your lord, not when I could be your … Gendry, I suppose. I’d want that. I want you, Arya. Nothing more and nothing less than Arya Stark.”

Arya kneels in front of him, and his heart seizes because it’s _too damn similar_ and _whose fault is that exactly?_ But this time, she doesn’t kiss him when her small hands frame his face. Instead, she just looks at him with wonder and steel and pride, open and vulnerable love etched into her sharp, clever face.

“You got a lot better at that,” she comments, her eyes searching his face in the torchlight.

“Well,” Gendry shrugs and wraps his hands around her forearms, laughing a little nervously. “When you’re lord, you can hire people to rehearse conversations with you, so I’ve had a bit of practice.”

“You absolute idiot,” Arya breathes, her thumb stroking ever so slightly over his left cheekbone.

“Aye,” Gendry agrees, leaning towards her like she’s the sun, his forest lass who he wants to follow to the ends of the earth. “I am that. Nothing could change that.”

“Good.”

When she kisses him this time, he meets her in the middle, and he can’t think of a word for it past _home._

In the morning, he’ll have to decide if he’ll remain lord of Storm’s End, or if he’ll leave it to someone better-suited for it. In the morning, he’ll have to ask Arya if she really wants him following her around the world. In the morning, he’ll have to face himself and ask if he can open himself up to be hurt like that again. In the morning, he’ll have to answer these questions and more, some of which he might not even know yet.

But in the light of the forge, the only answer that remains, the only one that means anything at all, is Arya Stark.

**Author's Note:**

> *looks at finale and then yeets the canon into the trash*
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
